


Growing Pains

by kingess



Series: The Course of True Love [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Feuilly Week, M/M, aro/ace!Feuilly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-25 10:54:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12529720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingess/pseuds/kingess
Summary: At Feuilly’s request, Bahorel and Jehan agreed not to tell anyone what was going on between the three of them. Which was just as well because most of the time, they didn’t know what was going on between them either. After Bahorel’s very abrupt admission of his romantic feelings toward Feuilly and Jehan’s quieter, more confused admission that he felt something as well, Feuilly had hesitantly admitted that maybe there was something between the three of them that was different than his relationships with other people. Maybe. He really had no idea. He’d never done something like this before.In the days and weeks after they got everything out in the open, he realized, though, that Bahorel and Jehan hadn’t done anything like this before either.





	1. Problems

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends! I've been trying to writing a sequel to Figuring It Out for the better part of a year, but it has finally come together--and just in time for Feuilly Week too!

At Feuilly’s request, Bahorel and Jehan agreed not to tell anyone what was going on between the three of them. Which was just as well because most of the time, they didn’t know what was going on between them either. After Bahorel’s very abrupt admission of his romantic feelings toward Feuilly and Jehan’s quieter, more confused admission that he felt _something_ as well, Feuilly had hesitantly admitted that maybe there was something between the three of them that was different than his relationships with other people. Maybe. He really had no idea. He’d never done something like this before.

In the days and weeks after they got everything out in the open, he realized, though, that Bahorel and Jehan hadn’t done anything like this before either. They both knew how to handle romantic relationships and also normal platonic relationships, but they had agreed that this was _more_ —or at least _different_ —than their usual platonic relationships with the rest of their friends, which meant that this was new territory for all three of them.

Feuilly wasn’t sure if he felt better or worse knowing that none of them were really knew what they were doing. In public, absolutely nothing had changed, and Feuilly clung to that stability because things at home sometimes took him by surprise.

A month into their…experimental relationship, the three of them were relaxing in the living room together, watching a movie while Bahorel knit. It’d been a rough week for all of them. Feuilly was picking up more work as a freelance graphic artist, but he'd also been getting more hours at his two retail jobs as the students he worked with took time off to prepare for finals. He'd been cutting back on sleep to try and meet his freelance deadlines and his body was starting to feel it. The impending end of the school semester brought an increased work load for Bahorel and Jehan, and very few things made Bahorel hate law school more than dealing with end-of-semester papers and projects. The end of the semester had collected its own toll on Jehan, who was only just starting to come out of a melancholic spell that had lasted more than a week. All three of them needed a quiet weekend and Feuilly thought that a movie together was a promising start, but when Jehan came back to the living room after taking some dishes into the kitchen, he hesitated for a moment. Instead of returning to his spot next to Bahorel, he sat next to Feuilly on the floor. For someone who insisted on his personal space with people he was unfamiliar with, Jehan was surprisingly tactile with the people he was close with and this was hardly the first time Jehan had curled up next to him instead of Bahorel (and it usually was when Bahorel was knitting or crocheting and Jehan would complain that Bahorel was moving too much for him to get comfortable).

But this was the first time that Jehan held Feuilly’s hand when he sat next to him. The gesture had seemed natural coming from Jehan, who tucked his hand against Feuilly’s and wove their fingers together and didn’t call attention to it at all. Just testing the water.

Jehan did things like this often. They were his attempts to sort out the new boundaries of physical affection between them. Normally, these attempts didn’t feel quite so _awkward_. Feuilly couldn’t remember the last time he’d held someone’s hand—maybe when he was a child?—and he couldn’t ever remember interlocking fingers with someone like this. It didn’t feel right but he hesitated to pull away immediately.

He never had learned to assert his boundaries properly.

Luckily, after a minute or so, Jehan looked at him. “Is this as awkward for you as it is for me?”

When Feuilly nodded, Jehan laughed and pulled his hand away.

“We’ll just add that to our out-of-bounds list, shall we?”

They had spent the last month sorting out what was out-of-bounds and what wasn’t through a series of small experiments like this, and they had found other ways to express affection—both physical and not. Hugs were fine—even welcome. Feuilly hadn’t been much of a hugger growing up—foster homes weren’t known for their physical affection—but he found that it was…nice just being held at the end of long day. No demands or expectations, just the comfort of another body against his. Jehan was prone to snuggling up against Feuilly’s side when they watched TV or movies, though spooning and lap-sitting were (thankfully) reserved for Bahorel. Feuilly was fine offering up shoulder massages to both Jehan and Bahorel (who always carried tension through his neck and shoulders), but being on the receiving end of a massage felt weird to Feuilly. It was intimate in a way that he wasn’t comfortable with and neither Jehan or Bahorel had pushed the issue when he said he wasn’t comfortable with it.

And that was mostly how things were between all three of them. They tested new boundaries, but by and large, things were as they always were…until they weren’t.  Until Jehan slipped his hand into Feuilly’s. Until Feuilly caught Bahorel watching him with the same look of adoration he usually reserved for Jehan. Until Feuilly avoided going home till late at night because he worried that Bahorel and Jehan didn’t have enough time alone together. Until Bahorel’s hand lingered on Feuilly’s shoulder longer than it used to and Feuilly panicked internally over what Bahorel _meant_ by that. Until Jehan’s normally buoyant mood slipped into melancholic territory and Feuilly worried that _he_ was the cause because Jehan barely made eye contact with him for a week.

But none of them ever talked about about the parts of this relationship that weren’t sitting right, which was maddening because normally Feuilly couldn’t get the other two to shut up about their feelings. Not that he had ever _wanted_ them to shut about their feelings because being around people who were so emotionally expressive, who didn’t make him _guess_ at what was going on in their minds was so refreshing. After a childhood of being shunted from foster home to foster home—a few of which had been healthy homes but the majority ranged from dysfunctional to flat-out abusive—Feuilly didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to just _say_ that something about this was bothering him. And in the past—back before they had decided to explore the boundaries of their relationship—both Bahorel and Jehan had been good about checking in with him, about creating opportunities to get something off his chest when he needed it because they knew he wasn’t comfortable instigating those conversations. Jehan had _knack_ for knowing when Feuilly was upset about something and knew just the right way to phrase a question so that Feuilly never felt like he was bothering when the other man when he vented about whatever was on his mind. And Bahorel…well, for as long as Feuilly had known him, Bahorel barreled in to difficult conversations with the assumption that it was better to stir up hurt feelings if it meant getting them out in the open instead of letting him fester.

The fact that neither of them had mentioned feeling the tension between them or had checked in with Feuilly made him wonder if _he_ was the only who felt it. If _he_ was the problem in this trio of theirs.

And he hated that. He hated the idea that he had soured a perfect thing—because they’d been doing so well before all of this. There had been a balance and a flow to their lives together that had been a source of strength for him and now that source of strength was just a knot of insecurities because he constantly worried that Bahorel wanted more from their relationship than he was willing to give and he was never certain that Jehan was entirely on board with this whole situation and was just putting on a good show.

And despite that all of this was churning in his gut, he kept quiet. He let Jehan snuggle against him during the rest of their movie, unable to shake the fear that Jehan was sitting there thinking that he’d rather be sitting next to Bahorel. He pretended to not notice that Bahorel watched _them_ more than he watched the movie, and he definitely pretended that he didn’t suspect Bahorel was thinking of all the things that he had with Jehan but didn’t have with Feuilly. And when the movie was over, he excused himself. He said that he was tired and really did need to turn in. He hurried to get ready for bed and turned out his lights before either of his friends even had the chance to ask if he were feeling all right.

Because he wasn’t all right. He hadn’t been this _not_ all right in a while, but he didn’t know how to say any of it. He didn’t want to cause a problem where the other two didn’t see one. He didn’t want to upset the two men he cared so much about and risk pushing them away.

So he laid in bed alone in the dark, and when he heard the first rumblings of an argument from the other bedroom, he tried very hard to pretend he wasn’t ruining everything.

* * *

 

As Jehan brushed his teeth, he could see Bahorel getting ready for bed in the mirror. Except his boyfriend wasn’t getting ready for bed. Not really. He was doing that obnoxious thing where he felt the need to aggressively organize their bedroom right before they went to sleep. He cleared off their shared desk and tried to put away Jehan’s books on the bookshelf despite the fact that he had never mastered Jehan’s book sorting scheme—divided by genre, then sorted alphabetically by author. Bahorel huffed when he couldn’t fit a book on the shelf and then dumped it back on the desk. He tripped over a pair of his own shoes which had been left by the bed, and made an irritated noise when he tossed them in the closet.

Jehan spat his toothpaste into the sink and rinsed out his mouth. “Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you or are you going to make me guess?”

Bahorel paused in the middle of sorting his shirts by color in the closet. He hated the way Jehan put away their laundry but Jehan had said that as long as he was the one doing laundry, Bahorel wasn’t allowed to complain how it was put away. “Nothing’s bothering me,” he said.

“Okay, we both know that’s a lie,” Jehan said. He put his toothbrush aside and climbed onto their bed. He patted it as an invitation for Bahorel to come join him. It wasn’t unusual for Bahorel to engage with his problems physically—hence the late-night room reorganization—but it was _very_ unlike him to deny that anything was wrong. Jehan had gotten the sense that something was festering in the house, but he was coming out of a melancholic spell and thought that those worries were the product of an overly-anxious mind.

He was beginning to think that wasn’t actually the case.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t want to upset you,” Bahorel said from the closet.

Jehan rolled his eyes. “That’s not how things work between us,” he said. That was a rule established early in their relationship—that each had the freedom to say what they felt, even if it risked hurting the other one. They did their best to handle those conversations delicately and even though delicacy wasn’t Bahorel’s strong suit, he did have a big heart and it was never his intention to deliberately hurt someone—particularly someone he cared about. “Say what you need to say.”

“Your mood has only balanced out in the last week and I don’t want to make things hard for you.”

“Bahorel, hon, I’m not going to break,” he said. “And frankly, I find it a little insulting that you’re using my mood disorder as an excuse to hide from your problems.”

He didn’t have a mood disorder in the clinical sense, but he was prone to depressive episodes from time to time. The problem was that he felt things too strongly, so what would be a passing sadness for most people had a tendency to cling to him for days or weeks and he had the hardest time shaking it. And Bahorel wasn’t wrong to worry that he hadn’t shaken the mood entirely, but he was wrong to use that as an excuse to avoid addressing whatever was bothering him.

“It’s nothing I want to bring up before bed. I know you don’t like hashing things out when you’re tired.”

“Would you stop making this about me?” Jehan said. “Something’s upsetting you and I want to know what it is.”

“Well, if it’s so important to you to drag this all out before bed, I’m pissed,” Bahorel said. He stepped away from the closet, but he didn’t join Jehan on the bed.

“About?”

“It’s not fair.”

“It’s late. I’m tired. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“It’s not fair that you can hold Feuilly’s hand, that you can snuggle up against him, that the two of you can do whatever the hell you want and I can barely touch him now without him flinching away.”

“What?”

“Oh, come on, surely you’ve noticed.”

“No,” Jehan said, trying to recall a single example of Feuilly flinching away from Bahorel. “I haven’t noticed anything like that at all.”

“I don’t buy that,” Bahorel said. “You had to have noticed _something_. The whole apartment’s been off for the last month because I had to open my fat mouth and ruin everything.”

Jehan felt the self-loathing that came with those words and he patted the bed again, hoping Bahorel would join him so he could _do_ something about that negativity. “You didn’t ruin anything,” he said. “You were honest about how you felt.”

“And now my best friend doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“I don’t—I haven’t seen any of this avoidance you’re talking about.”

“He flinches when I throw my arm around his shoulders like I used to. He avoids being alone with me. The other day we ran laps at the gym and afterward he wouldn’t change in front of me in the locker room. Like what the hell? I’ve told him over and over that my damn feelings don’t change anything between us, that I don’t expect anything from him, but that doesn’t matter because everything’s broken anyway!”

“Have you talked to him about this?”

“Did you miss the part where he’s been avoiding me?” he snapped, his voice almost cruel. He winced immediately. “Sorry. I don’t mean to take this out on you. I don’t want to upset you.”

“I’m not upset,” Jehan said. “But you need to talk to him about this.”

“It’ll just make things worse,” he said. “I already ruined enough—”

“You didn’t ruin anything!”

“Keep your voice down. You’re going to wake him up.”

“You don’t think he should be involved in this conversation?” Jehan asked. “If whatever the hell this is is going to work, we all need to be talking about it!”

“But I’m the one with the problem, not the two of you! These are just my stupid issues to work through because I went and fell in love with my best friend.”

“That’s not how this works! You don’t get to walk around in a bad mood and refuse to address it because you think it’s only about you. You’re in a relationship, Bahorel. Your moods don’t just affect you anymore!”

“I don’t want it to affect the two of you! I don’t want it to affect _me_! I want it to be a non-issue!”

“Well, that’s backfired rather spectacularly, don’t you think?”

“See, this is why I didn’t want to get into this tonight. I didn’t want to upset you!”

“I’m not upset!”

“Then why are you shouting?”

“Because this is stupid! There is a solution to this problem and it involves you walking down the hall and knocking on Feuilly’s door instead of prowling around in here!”

“That’s not going to fix this because he doesn’t want this to work!”

Jehan sat back. He’d been worried about that. That Feuilly felt pressured into redefining their friendship because of them and it made Jehan sick to think that he might have said as much to Bahorel without either of them talking to him about it as well. “Has he said that to you?”

“He doesn’t need to! And don’t sit there looking so shocked—it’s not like you were on board with this from the beginning.”

“Bahorel, what the everloving fuck are you talking about? I’m all in. I’m invested!”

“You told me you don’t love Feuilly like I do! You told me that you were feeling insecure about _us_ for the last month! Because not only did I ruin my friendship with Feuilly, apparently I was on the verge of ruining my relationship with you! I’m the only one who wanted this to work and I dragged the two of you along with me—”

“Seriously?” Jehan said, getting off the bed because now he was upset. “I told you I was feeling insecure because I was feeling insecure and I wanted to sort it out before it complicated things between all three of us! You don’t get to use my feelings as an excuse to self-sabotage!”

“I’m not—”

“This is textbook self-sabotage, Bahorel! You’re hoarding all this negativity and refusing to do anything about it even though the solution is just walking down the hall and talking to someone!”

“Oh, you’re one to talk about hoarding negativity!”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I asked you over and over again when you were starting to slip the other week what was going on, and you refused to tell me anything! You just shut me out—”

“I didn’t _know_ what was upsetting me!” Jehan snapped. “I’m not you! I don’t have the words to describe how I’m feeling the minute I feel it! I need time to sort it all out—but once I figured it out, I told you! I wasn’t shutting you out to make a point! Fuck, Bahorel, who do you think I am?”

Before Bahorel could answer, there was a knock at the door.

“Great, now you’ve woken up Feuilly,” he muttered, stomping towards the door.

Jehan rolled his eyes, not feeling terribly sympathetic towards anyone at the moment. “He’s not our child,” he muttered. “We don’t need to argue behind closed doors to protect him.”

Bahorel yanked open the door, and Feuilly stood in the hall in his pajamas. His jaw was tight and he looked like he might be ill.

“Did we wake you?” Bahorel asked. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I was awake,” Feuilly said, his voice was quiet but firm. “But I think we need to talk. All of us. Now.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter didn't feel too much like "wacky complications that could have been avoided if they just TALKED to each other." Yes, these three nerds haven't been communicating as well as they should have been, but that will be sorted out in chapter two, which is nearly 4K of three grown men sitting around in their pajamas and talking about their feelings. 
> 
> Chapter Two still needs a little bit of work, so it might take a couple of days to get it posted. In the meantime, feel free to say hi on [tumblr](kingesstropolis.tumblr.com)! Happy Feuilly Week!


	2. Solutions

At Jehan’s suggestion, they all retreated to the living room. Neutral territory, he called it, and Feuilly was grateful. It wasn’t that he thought Bahorel and Jehan would team up against him, but having this conversation in their room would would have felt like it was them against him anyway. Hashing this all out in a common space would be better for all of them.

And they were going to hash this all out because Feuilly refused to lay in bed listening to them argue—listening to them argue about _him._ The faint sound of arguments growing steadily louder had been a common soundtrack during his childhood and he hated it. He hated it then and he hated it now. He hated it _more_ now because he cared about these two men—he loved them, in his own way—and he wasn’t going to listen to them tear each other apart about _him._ He had to clench his fists to keep his hands from shaking because instigating this conversation wasn’t something he was at all comfortable with, but someone needed to do it.

He was an adult. He could have adult conversations.

In the living room, Bahorel had collapsed onto the sofa even though all three of knew the moment this conversation got heated, he’d be back on his feet. Jehan stood near the TV, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. Feuilly hadn’t been able to make out most of what they were arguing about—he’d been trying _not_ to eavesdrop until he’d heard his name crop up and realized this was a three-of-them issue instead of a two-of-them issue—but Jehan was obviously pissed about it.

“Are you two going to sit?” Bahorel asked.

Feuilly perched on the edge of the armchair, too tense to relax into the way he normally would, but Jehan remained on his feet.

“I’m pissed at you,” he said. “I don’t want to sit next to you right now.”

“Jehan, don’t be like that,” Bahorel said.

Bahorel had a quick fuse, but his temper also burned quickly. He was already cooling down, but Jehan, it seemed, would need quite a bit more time for his temper to cool.

“Don’t be like what?” Jehan said. “You accused me of deliberately not talking to you like I was playing some sort of head game with you! You know how much I hate that shit!”

Feuilly looked between the two of them. “Wait, you said that to him?” he asked Bahorel. Shit, no wonder Jehan was pissed.

“Not in so many words,” Bahorel said. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that and it was shitty of me to have said it at all, but I don’t need you two teaming up against me.”

“What? No,” Feuilly said. “None of us are taking sides. This talk isn’t about us taking shots at each other. We’re all on the same side. We all want this to work. But I was lying in bed listening to you argue and tying myself in knots because I refuse to be the reason you two break up.”

Jehan cocked his head to the side and his anger seemed to deflate a little. “Break up? Who said anything about breaking up?”

“You two were arguing and I thought…” He trailed off, unable to find the words for his fear and anxiety.

“Shit, man,” Bahorel said. “It’s going to take a lot more than that paltry disagreement to break us up.”

“We argue sometimes,” Jehan said. “And normally things don’t get this heated, but normally we don’t let all of this fester for over a month before we address it.”

Feuilly let out a breath. “So you’ve felt the…tension or whatever for the last month?” he asked. “It’s not just me?”

“I think the problem is that we all thought we were the only one who felt anything was amiss,” Jehan said, looking to Bahorel to confirm that assessment.

“We’ve made a mess of this, haven’t we?” Bahorel asked. He rubbed his hand over his face. “Shit.”

“It’s not too late to fix it,” Feuilly said. “Assuming…assuming you both want to fix it.”

“Do _you_ want to fix it?” Jehan asked, casting a worried look at Bahorel. “Because I said it from the start, Feuilly, what you feel about this matters just as much as what either of us feel. We don’t want you to feel that our friendship hinges on making this out to be more than what you want.”

“Yes, I want to fix this,” Feuilly said. “I—I mean, I do love you both. I mean, not in a…you know…”

Fuck. Why was he so bad at this?

“We know,” Bahorel said. He took a deep breath, like he was trying to brace himself for something he didn’t want to hear. “But, Feuilly, things haven’t felt right between us for weeks now, and I don’t want to sacrifice what we have—had?—if exploring this queer platonic thing is just going to ruin everything. You’re my best friend, man, and I love you. I’m _in_ love with you, and I know you don’t feel the same, but it’s like now that you know how I feel that you’re not comfortable around me anymore, and I hate that.”

“I…I don’t know what to say,” Feuilly said. He barely had the vocabulary to articulate how he was feeling, and he certainly didn’t have the tact or delicacy needed to navigate something as fraught as this conversation. He didn’t want to hurt them, either of them. He didn’t want to be the source of the problems, the reason why this couldn’t work out between them, but he knew if things kept going as they were, all three of them would end up miserable, and he didn’t want that either.

Jehan watched him with a look of utter compassion. “Say whatever you need to,” Jehan said. “Bahorel and I have a rule between us—whatever needs to be said gets to be said, even if it hurts, even if it’s going to upset someone. I mean, try not to be a dick about it, but this,” he gestured to the space between the three of them, “this is a safe, sacred space. Nothing you say to us will be used against you—not in a future argument, not in some weird grudge. You don’t need to worry about that. Whatever you’re feeling is valid and I know it can be uncomfortable to bring this all to the surface, but we can’t work through this if any of us are holding back. It’s like you said—we’re all on the same side, so let’s help each other.”

“I’m not comfortable,” Feuilly said, each word feeling like he’d dragged it out of the pit of his stomach and forced past his teeth. “I’m not—you say nothing has changed, but it has! I’ve been in this place before, where people have romantic feelings about me, and it always ends in ruins because the other person always wants more than I’m comfortable giving. I’ve seen the way you look at me, Bahorel, and I just know that I’m going to ruin things between us because I can’t give you what you need. I feel like I have to be on guard whenever you’re around, because in my experience, when people aren’t given what they need, then tend to take it.”

“But I don’t _need_ anything from you,” Bahorel said. “Like yeah, I want to hold you and be close to you and show you all the ways I care about you, but I’m a goddamn adult! You can say _no_ to me and I’m not going to freak out! But the idea that I’m causing you any sort of pain over this is unbearable to me. I can’t change the way I feel.  I mean, shit, man, have you looked at you? You’re kind of perfect and I’m surprised the whole world isn’t in love with you. But love—even romantic love—it’s not about what you _get_ out of it, it’s about what you give.  And I’m not going to give you anything you don’t want. And yeah, I’m a romantic guy and I want romance in my life, but I already have Jehan for that!”

“Thanks,” Jehan said flatly.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Bahorel said, turning to Jehan. “I love you. I love what we have together, and our relationship means the world to me. You haven’t been turned into a substitute for Feuilly just because I’ve fallen in love with him too. Our relationship, Jehan, the stuff that’s just between us, that’s still just about us. That hasn’t changed.”

Feuilly looked to Jehan and saw some of the tension in his shoulders ease. The shifting dynamics between them hadn’t been bothering Feuilly alone. Jehan had needed to have that relationship reaffirmed as much as Feuilly needed to hear that his boundaries would be respected. He shoved his hands in his pajama pockets.

“What’s on your mind?” Jehan asked, not missing Feuilly’s continued discomfort.

Feuilly shrugged but when neither Bahorel or Jehan said anything, he knew they were giving him the time he needed to find the words he needed. He turned to Bahorel. “I guess I just don’t understand how you can say that you’re _in love_ with both Jehan and me and then also say that you’re okay not having the same kind of relationship with both of us.”

Bahorel sat forward, mouth open undoubtedly ready to trot out the same speech about how nothing had changed even though clearly something had, but Jehan held up a hand.

“Can we get philosophical for a minute?” he asked.

“Jehan, when have we ever been able to stop you from getting philosophical?” Bahorel asked, a fond smile on his face.

“I just think that there’s some…disconnect happening,” Jehan said. “Love means so many different things to so many people—and so many different things to the same people—and I love you both, but they way I feel about each of you is different, and you both love each other, and you both love me, and we all talk about love but I really don’t think any of us mean exactly the same thing when we say it. Feuilly, can I ask what your understanding of romantic love _is_? Or is that weird?”

That was hardly the weirdest thing he’d ever been asked by Jehan, but again, he shrugged. “I don’t _get_ it,” he said. “I understand the idea of being in love with someone, that some people form special bonds between each other and that it’s usually tied up with sex and all that, and sometimes it seems to work out fine but other times it turns out to be a complete mess and…I don’t know. I don’t get it. Not for myself. I never have.”

Jehan nodded. “And that’s okay. I don’t want this conversation to turn into something that makes you feel bad about yourself. That’s not what I’m trying to do. It’s just…Bahorel, hon, do you think you can articulate what _changed_ in the way you feel about Feuilly? Maybe I’m picking this all apart too much, but I think maybe it would help.”

Bahorel let out a slow breath as he thought over the question. Feuilly had expected him to make some glib remark at first, because sometimes Jehan asked bizarre questions that couldn’t possibly be answered with anything other than a glib remark, but Bahorel seemed to be taking this seriously.

“So it’s two things, I think,” he said slowly. “The first is the way you make _me_ feel. I’ve always enjoyed your company, always thought you funny and generous and dedicated and passionate and I loved how well we jived, but overtime, it became more than just liking you and enjoying your company because I caught myself getting restless when I didn’t see you for a couple days and when we would grab lunch together, it was like everything else faded away and all I could see was you and all I cared about was making you laugh and making sure you were okay. And when you’d call or text, I’d feel giddy seeing your name on my phone and when you’d buy me yarn with your employee discount, I couldn’t stop grinning because you don’t give frivolous gifts and I knew that meant that I meant something to you. And that’s not…that’s not how I feel with our other friends. With Jehan? Absolutely. Jehan can look at me and make my soul sing, but that doesn’t happen to me with just anyone.”

“And the other thing?” Jehan prompted.

“For me, I think there’s an element of depth that I associate with different kinds of love,” he said. “At least that’s a way that I can conceptualize it. Love is like a series of nets, all sort of stacked on each other, and the deeper the net, the more I’m willing to do for that person. So my cohort in law school is here,” he gestured up near his eyes, “and then people I’m friendly with but wouldn’t, I don’t know, help them move, they’d be here.” This time he gestured near his neck. “Our close friends and my family? The sort of people I’d die for? Here,”  He gestured at his knees. “But the two of you are even deeper than that. I’d die for Enjolras or Grantaire or any of them, but I’d kill for either of you.”

Silence hung heavy in the room for a moment.

“Well, that got heavy really fast,” Feuilly said and Bahorel laughed.

“I’m serious, man. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you unless it was something that would hurt Jehan, and I would do anything to make sure that you’re happy and healthy and all of that. When I say I’m in love with you, that’s what I’m talking about. It’s not about taking you on dates or any of the physical stuff. There are a million different ways to show you that I care, and that’s all I need from you. I need you to know that I fucking care.”

“I already knew that!” Feuilly said. “You always cared and I always cared and I don’t understand how that’s any different than how things were before if you’re not, I don’t know, secretly dying to kiss me!”

“Your well-being is more important to me than whether or not I can kiss you! I’m not a selfish dick!”

“Can I say something?” Jehan asked, cutting in before the conversation could get more heated. “Bahorel has said over and over that he doesn’t expect you to reciprocate how he feels and so maybe the way to make sense of this between you two is to go back to what he said earlier—that he knew he was _in love_ because of the way you make him feel. That’s something that’s entirely independent of what you do, Feuilly. It doesn’t require you to do anything. Bahorel having romantic feelings has changed the way he _feels_ when you’re around, but it hasn’t changed the nature of your relationship with him.”

“Yes,” Bahorel breathed. “That’s it exactly. Shit, Jehan, this is why I love you. You’re so much better at saying this stuff than I am.”

Jehan took a small bow.

“That’s all…that’s all fine,” Feuilly said, “but I can’t shake the idea that romantic feelings require a certain set of behavior. It’s one thing for you to say you don’t have an expectations, but the entire world says differently.”

“Fuck that noise,” Bahorel said. “This isn’t about how the rest of the world does this. This is about us—all three of us—and it’s about us not wanting to hurt each other. Part of loving you means respecting who you are, and if I cross that line, call me out on it and I won’t do it again. But Feuilly, what I can’t handle, what would break my heart, is you pulling away from me. And I’ve felt you pulling away and it’s been killing me because I knew it was because of me, because of how I felt. If I need to scale back, I’ll scale back, just don’t leave me behind, man.”

Feuilly’s throat felt tight and he swallowed hard. He could count on a single hand the number of times someone spoke to him with this depth of affection, but he couldn’t ever remember feeling that he meant so much to a single person. It was terrifying.

But he’d also never felt so safe with someone before.

“You know the idea of losing you scares the shit out of me, right?” Feuilly said, his voice tight. He blinked a few times because he didn’t want to cry right now, even though he knew Bahorel and Jehan wouldn’t judge him for it. “You’re the closest thing I’ve got to family, Bahorel, and I’ve been terrified that you’re going to get sick of me not being able to give you what you want. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Bahorel was on his feet and he tugged Feuilly up and into a hug. His arms were warm and welcoming and strong and secure, offering all the love Bahorel had to give, and Feuilly clung to his shirt and buried his face against Bahorel’s shoulder. He’d spent so much effort in the last month trying not to get too close to Bahorel that he’d forgotten that Bahorel had this way of hugging a person that made everything wrong in the universe disappear.

“I’m not going anywhere, I swear,” Bahorel whispered gruffly in his ear. “And I will tell you that as much as you need to here it. But if you start feeling uncomfortable again, I need you to tell me, okay? I know that’s hard for you, but this isn’t the sort of thing that gets better by ignoring it. If I’m hurting you in any way, I want to know. I can’t bear to hurt you.”

Feuilly nodded against Bahorel’s shoulder, his throat feeling too tight for him to trust his voice. Feuilly relaxed against Bahorel, allowing himself the pleasure of just being held, and when he pulled back, he found Jehan smiling gently at them.

“Excellent,” he said and then yawned. “Do we get to go to bed now?”

Feuilly cleared his throat. “I’m not sure we’re done,” he said. “I don’t—Bahorel and I aren’t the only ones who’ve been struggling to sort this out. When you were out of sorts the other week, you could barely look at me.”

“To be fair,” Jehan said, “I could barely look at anybody. It wasn’t just you.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” Bahorel said. He reached forward and took Jehan’s hand, gently tugging him back to the couch. “Let’s hear it, love. If we’re going to spend all night talking about our feelings, we should at least do it properly.”

Jehan allowed Bahorel to pull him down onto the couch and the last bit of his tension seemed to fade away. He melted against Bahorel’s side, slotting in beside him as though he were designed solely to fit right there. Feuilly sat back down on the armchair with his body angled towards the other two.

“Tell us what’s been going on,” Bahorel said. “I know some of it, but let’s have all of it out.”

A shadow of a smile tugged at Jehan’s lips as he took a moment to sort out his thoughts before speaking. “I don’t know if you know this about me, Feuilly, but I am an anxiety-ridden mess like…eighty percent of the time.”

Bahorel nuzzled Jehan a little behind his ear. “You’re not a mess.”

Jehan’s smile widened and he patted Bahorel’s knee. “I’m a bit of a mess,” he said. “My moods—depressive episodes or whatever you want to call them—it’s usually just my brain misfiring a bit, but stress can make it worse. I think I was picking up on the tension between all of us and just picking it apart in my head and making everything worse for myself.”

Feuilly had been aware of Jehan’s melancholic spells for years, the same way all their friends were. He knew it was a thing that happened on occasion and he knew not to worry too much if Jehan withdrew for a couple of days while he took some time to sort himself out. These moods always passed for Jehan. Since moving in with Bahorel and Jehan and getting to know Jehan on a more intimate level, he understood that those moods passed because Jehan was aggressively vigilant about self-care and Bahorel was willing to put everything else aside to be a source of support and stability for his boyfriend. The moods didn’t pass as a matter of course; they passed because Jehan and the people who cared about him worked through them.

And as someone who cared about Jehan, Feuilly felt that now was maybe the time to learn how to help.

“Was there anything in particular that was bothering you?” he asked. He had no idea if this was the right thing to ask, but the look Bahorel was giving him over Jehan’s head suggested that he was on the right track. “And is there anything I can do to help? I know you and Bahorel have a pretty good system going and I don’t want to intrude or…or to mess up a good system, but I care about and…and I was worried.”

Jehan looked at Feuilly with surprising tenderness, as though Feuilly had given him some rare and remarkable gift, and he took another moment before speaking. “Checking in with me and being patient with me is helping plenty, to be honest. I was mostly worried about things between Bahorel and me—worried that his changing feelings for you meant that they’d change for me, worried that he wasn’t happy with our relationship, worried that I wasn’t a sufficient partner for him. Once I realized that was happening, he and I talked about it. We’re going to work on that, take the time to nurture our relationship, that sort of thing. But I’ve also been worried about you, Feuilly.”

That was not anything close to what he’d expected Jehan to say. “What?”

Jehan nodded. “Worried that you’re not happy with the way things are, that you felt pressured into something you didn’t want, that I’ve been harming your friendship with Bahorel or that I’m trying to force an emotional intimacy between us that you don’t feel. After this conversation, I realize that I was a little off the mark on all that.”

“You weren’t wrong that something was off, though,” Feuilly said.

“And I feel awful that I didn’t check in with you earlier,” Jehan said.

But Feuilly shook his head. “That’s not your fault. I was worried about you—for a lot of the same reasons, actually—and I didn’t ask how you were doing either.”

“Really? You were that worried about me?”

Feuilly was taken aback at how surprised Jehan sounded about that. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been worried this whole month that I’m mucking up your guys’ relationship and that you were only spending time with me to make Bahorel happy and that you resented the time you spent with me instead of him.”

“Oh, Feuilly, no,” Jehan said. “That’s not it at all. I’m so sorry that I’ve done anything that made you feel that way.”

“It’s not your fault. If anything, it’s mine. I—”

“If you two start playing _it_ _’s-not-your-fault-it’s-mine,_ ” Bahorel said wryly, “I’m going to bed. All of us share equal blame in this miscommunication cluster fuck, and that’s the beginning and end of it. I’m not going to sit around listening to you two martyr yourselves.”

“Don’t act like you don’t love us,” Jehan grumbled and Bahorel smiled.

“I do love you,” Bahorel said. “Both of you. Which is why I know that the underlying problem is that the two of you don’t know each other as well as you both know me. It's harder to tell if something is actually bothering the other person or if it's nothing. And to that, there is an easy solution—you two need to go on a couple of dates.”

“What?” Jehan said, clearly as perplexed by this solution as Feuilly was.

“Did you just tell me to _date_ your boyfriend?” Feuilly asked.

“Okay, guys, don’t look at me like I just told you that you need to fuck,” Bahorel said, chuckling. “Go on dates. Platonic dates. Friend dates. Man dates. Call it whatever you want. But I think that it’d be good for all of us if you two got to know each other independently of me. Strengthening your personal relationship together will only make our collective relationship stronger.”

“That’s a good point,” Jehan said. “You’re a smart man, Bahorel.”

Bahorel grinned. “You two should go to that art exhibit you’ve been talking about, Jehan. It’d be a perfect date for the two of you.”

“I thought we were going to that exhibit,” Jehan said, frowning a little.

“Jehan, I love and adore you, but I _hate_ going to museums with you. I can always look at an entire exhibit in the time it takes you to look at one painting.”

“It’s not my fault you don’t know how to properly appreciate art,” Jehan said. He sounded indignant, but a smile was pulling at his lips.

“I can appreciate art without analyzing every single brush stroke,” Bahorel said.

“He’s the _worst_ at museums,” Feuilly said in a conspiratorial tone to Jehan, simply for the joy of watching Bahorel puff with indignance. “I stopped going to them with him years ago.”

Bahorel groaned and looked up at the ceiling. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I? The two of you are going to gang up on me for the rest of our lives.”

Feuilly rolled his eyes. “Don’t forget I’ve met your family, Bahorel. Teasing is like oxygen for the whole lot of you and you love it.”

“I do,” he said and then he yawned. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Shit, it’s late. We should all get to bed—unless anyone has anything else they need to say?”

“I’m talked out,” Jehan said. “Feuilly?”

“I think I’m good,” he said, almost surprised at how much he meant it.

Bahorel stood and helped Jehan off the couch and then extended his hand to Feuilly to help him up. He pulled Feuilly into another hug, this one just as loving as the previous one, but briefer. When Bahorel let go, Jehan was waiting with an earnest smile.

“My turn?” he asked, his arms extended towards Feuilly.

Feuilly stepped into the hug, thinking that this was something he could get used to.

“Thanks for forcing our hand a little on this and getting everything out in the open,” Jehan said, pulling back.

“Don’t mention it,” Feuilly said. “I’ll see you in the morning and we can talk more about going to that art exhibit, yeah?”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Jehan said, and then he shuffled back to the room he shared with Bahorel, closing the door behind him with a sleepy smile and a wave.

Feuilly went back to his own room and crawled back into bed, feeling wrung out physically and emotionally, but surprisingly content. The anxious worry that had plagued him for weeks had vanished, and he fell asleep quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed reading these nerds talking about their feelings as much as I enjoyed writing it! Thank you all so much for reading/commenting/kudos-ing. I've got the feeling this is not the last time I'll be writing this trio, so check in at [tumblr](kingesstropolis.tumblr.com) for writing updates!


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